


you would have to be half-mad to dream me up

by lucidbabbles



Category: The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Mental Institution
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-09-08
Updated: 2015-04-16
Packaged: 2017-11-13 19:48:01
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 11
Words: 13,056
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/507088
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lucidbabbles/pseuds/lucidbabbles
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <em>You're sick, Tony.</em>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Very loosely adhering to the DSM IV. If at all.

Tony, she says, and she's crying. He wants to tell her, don't cry, please, Pep, everything's fine, don't cry, but everything's hazy and spinning and he has to throw up and--

*

He can't exactly remember how he got here. Well, he _can_ (he can guess, at least), from the floor of his workshop to the hospital where there were tubes and IVs and more tears and even more shouting, but then there were forms and questionnaires and Pepper saying, I can't watch you do this anymore, and then he's just. Here. He thinks it was the Cadillac that Happy drove him here in. Him and Pepper, but she's already left, after taking his phone and tablet and laptop and leaving nothing but a dry kiss on his cheek. _No more tears, Pep._

The room is four walls and white. There's a bed, a desk, a set of drawers, a window—no bars, the blandly smiling man ( _Coulson_ , he had had a name tag) had said, it's not prison—that's locked. It's not prison, but he feels trapped and claustrophobic, and what the fuck is he doing here?

He looks at the pamphlet Pepper had carefully left on the desk. _SHIELD Centre for Health and Wellness_ , it says. Informative. There's a small column on the inner fold that says _WITHDRAWAL TREATMENT_ , but Tony's guessing he's not here for that. He's been to rehab before, done the five star spa shit, done the cold turkey at home. He's not here for his propensity to indulge (“that's not indulging anymore, Tony, you almost died”) in alcohol, which hey, life really does look better through the bottom of a shot glass. Or a bottle.

Pepper had sat in the hardbacked plastic chair—and Tony remembers thinking, this is a private suite, don't they at least have padded chairs?--and rubbed his hand in hers, sad and faded around the edges. _Don't cry, Pep._ You're sick, she'd said, and she didn't cry, but her eyes were bright and her lips were taut. Like if she didn't pull herself together, the dams would break. You're sick, and you need to get help. 

It's not about the alcohol. It's not about the alcohol, but it's also not not about the alcohol.

He misses his whisky.

*

The orderly who comes to collect him for dinner doesn't look like an orderly. 

His tongue feels heavy in his mouth, like if he used it rust would actually flake off, but he'd been a tactless smartass long before he'd become...become whatever he's become now. _You're sick, Tony._

“I'm pretty sure the management didn't design neon pink Doc Martens to be part of the uniform,” he says. “Though I'm also pretty sure that it's gotta be hard to match any colour with that dirty grey.”

The girl—she looks like she's barely out of college, what is this place, trying to give him a complex?--merely smacks her gum and grins at him. “Nope,” she says, “but I told them it was necessary for _individual expression_. They're all about that here, you'll see.” She holds the door open with a fluorescent foot. “Come on, I'm supposed to bring you down to the rec room.”

He likes this girl. “It's not some hipster gathering, is it? Because I think I left my hemp muffins at home. Along with, you know, any dignity.” He stands up, and everything is a dull ache, like he's waking up after a hangover ( _Tony, you almost died_ ). “Lead the way, m'dear.”

She snorts, lets Tony exit the room first before following behind him. He'd caught a glimpse of the dully burnished tag near her collar, and says, conversationally, because he's awake now, and everything's revving up, “So, Darcy, tell me about this place.” He looks around him. “And also tell me who's the interior designer, because I think he's got _issues_ , this place looks like it's having an identity crisis, is it a loony bin or an office building?”

Darcy giggles, “That's what I told Coulson too.” She absently scuffs a foot against the muted grey carpet, runs a hand over the polished wood railings stretching down the hallway. “Though considering that I was expecting something out of _One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest_ , can't say I'm complaining. I refuse to be Nurse Ratched.”

“Pity, I was looking forward to being McMurphy,” Tony quips. 

There's a comfortable silence as Darcy leads him down one hallway, then turns down another one, and another one. They stop in front of heavy wooden double doors, and Darcy fishes keys out her pocket. She doesn't unlock the doors, tilting her head to look consideringly at Tony. “You're Tony Stark, right?”

Tony laughs, because that's a really belated realization, if anything. “Yep, the one and only, at your service. Sorry to disappoint, my assistant wouldn't let me bring my designer suits, I left my Prada three-piece back at the mansion, along with, you know, the hemp muffins and rice milk.” 

Darcy smacks him. “No, it's because you aren't wearing those cheesy tinted Lennon glasses.” She shifts, the keys clinking faintly in her hand, then grins at him. “You'll be fine.”

_You're sick, Tony._

“That's what I said,” Tony says, mock indignant. “But hey, thanks for your vote of confidence, or whatever, I don't even really know what the hell I'm doing here.”

She unlocks the door, pushing it open just wide enough for Tony to pass through. “Motto number two,” she calls behind him, “they're all about self-discovery here.” Tony turns his head back just in time to see Darcy smile cheekily at him, before she gently closes the door. 

“Huh,” he mutters to himself, “fucking rabbit hole.”

The rec room is surprisingly ordinary, it looks like a prep school library (Tony would know) that tried to make some compromises on the heavy wood panelling. There's bookshelves and tables and chairs, some couches and a generously large television set. (Coulson said, it's not a prison.)

There are only a few people scattered around the room. Nobody looks like they're going to go on a sudden, murderous rampage, nobody's talking to thin air, nobody's catatonic and drooling into their seat. Maybe, Tony thinks, he should have read the pamphlet. 

Then someone looks up from where he/she (gender indeterminate at this distance, he decides) is curled up on one of the buttery-looking couches, and there is a flash of green, in an outline of black and white. Tony shrugs mentally to himself, walks towards the couch. Meet the fucking neighbours, welcome to Crazy Town.

It's a man, though he's shockingly thin enough to barely pass for one. He doesn't take his eyes off Tony as he approaches, sits down next to him, and it's a cold, calculating stare that doesn't quite cut, doesn't quite insert itself subcutaneously under Tony's skin. Tony suppresses a slight shiver down his spine. _Someone just walked over your grave._

“You look like you'd disappear if you turned sideways, two-dimensional and all that,” he says conversationally. The man raises an eyebrow, a black line that looks like it's been drawn onto tracing paper with a 2B pencil.

“Do you always introduce yourself by insulting others first?” the man says, and his voice is low, even, a faint British accent that makes the words come out archly, buttery smooth. 

“Only when I'm hitting on them,” Tony grins, because it's true, not that he flirts that way, he's not stupid, he likes his clothes free of wine, thank you very much, but yes, he is hitting on him. The man looks unimpressed, and fuck, his eyes are green green green, and this close they almost detract from how the rest of him could cut Tony if he touched him, nothing but razor sharp edges. “So, introductions.”

“I know who you are,” the man says, now distinctly bored. “Here to fulfil the cliche of degenerate celebrity gone to rehab?”

“Ouch,” only not really, Tony's beginning to really like this place, or at least all the sass around here, maybe one of the entry requirements is certifiable bantering skills, hah, _certifiable_. 

“Okay, so now that's not fair,” he says, going for reasonable and sounding petulant instead, “you have me, what's that fancy turn of phrase, 'at a disadvantage', hello, my name is?”

The man looks at him curiously, and the expression manifests as a smirk. “There's no brain to mouth filter, is there? No wonder reporters always have a field day with you.”

“Sorry, but then that sounds like you follow gossip rags,” Tony retorts.

The smirk doesn't flicker. “Best friends with Perez, yes.”

And Tony's feeling a bit breathless, like talking, _bantering_ , with this man, this strange, opaque, clever man who looks like he could slice Tony to shreds in every sense of the phrase, is robbing him of oxygen. He's breathing carbon monoxide, nicotine on his tongue like he's smoking a cigarette, sitting here, talking, and _he still doesn't know his name_. Oh, he thinks, oh Pepper, what have you done, putting me here.

“If you don't tell me your name, I'm just going to keep thinking of you as the Thin Man,” he cajoles, and what is he doing, he thinks, a faint blip of self-awareness in his consciousness.

There's a shift, as the man tucks his legs under him. He's wearing some weird-looking socks, but the movement is quick, and Tony returns to staring at the face that's all cheekbones and green eyes and maliciously-tinged smile. “After the aborted nuclear bomb, or the 30s film?”

That's it, Tony thinks faintly, that takes the fucking cake. “Most people,” he remarks, “only know of 'Little Boy' and 'Fat Man', if they know the names at all, which they usually don't, trust me. And also, the bomb was named after the film anyway.”

The man shrugs. “I was a History student--” and there's a slight edge to the verb tense “--I did a paper on the arms race.” He's looking at Tony shrewdly again. “Your father was part of it.”

“Mmhmm, yeah, tell me something I don't know,” and Tony doesn't mean for the words to come out so bitter, but he's never been good at disguising any resentment for his dad, he doesn't think he can start now. 

“Oh, _daddy issues_ ,” the man almost coos, and it's definitely mocking now. “Is that what you're here for, self-destructive behaviour due to daddy not loving you enough?”

“Takes one to know one,” Tony snaps back, because that hits a little too close to home, he's here because, he's here because--

The man pales a little, and he's angry now, there's a tightening of his thin lips, and his eyes are more brittle bottle-green glass now than anything. “Yes it does, doesn't it,” he hisses. He stands up, and it's like watching bare-bones scaffolding rise up in fast-forward. “Nice meeting you, Tony Stark,” he says sardonically, and heads towards the doors. There's a brief conversation between him and the mild-looking man sitting near the doors, who places a finger in the paperback on his lap, nods, then stands, lets both himself and the thin man out. The doors click shut behind them.

Tony still sits. The space on the couch shows no indentation to indicate anyone had ever sat there.

“Fucking rabbit hole,” he says to no one.


	2. Chapter 2

He doesn't see the man again, not for the next few days. It's not because the next few days are a washing machine jumble ( _look at all the colours tumbling around through the little porthole_ ) of learning to sleep again, learning to pass time without his phones, without his tech pads and screwdrivers and getting grease on his fingers and dissecting engines and snapping at his robots. Learning to pass the seconds and minutes not spent waist-deep in metal and spare parts, time usually spent not-counting how many shots it takes this time to make the world go blurry around the edges. There's waking up (Darcy's his favourite alarm clock, it's always a jarring pounding on his door, before she pokes her head in yells, “Wakey wakey, eggs and bakey!”), going down to the dining hall to point out to Darcy that there is, in fact, no bacon, and the eggs leave much to be desired (he like his yolks runny, okay?), then group therapy and one-on-one, then more bickering with Darcy about the food, then rec room, or his own room, maybe, where he does some supposed soul-searching and more actual watching-the-clock-hands-tick. Then the dining hall (“What, no wine? Isn't this supposed to be five-star establishment?”), then his room again. 

It's a blur, because if Tony were to actually focus on the repetition of it all, he might actually go crazy. _Really_ crazy.

He doesn't see the man again, until he slips into the rec room one afternoon (he's not counting the days, he isn't, those aren't tally marks on the wall above his bedpost, Darcy always laughs when she sees them) and the man is there on the couch, a very slight, blink-and-you'll-miss-it figure in what looks like faded flannel pajamas. 

“So,” Tony says, flopping down next to him, “I asked around, you're infamous around these parts, did you know? Some of the orderlies are terrified of you.”

The man snorts, a small condescending huff. “It's not my fault they can't take a few sharp words.”

“Yeah, see, that's not what _they_ said,” Tony says delightedly, he loves needling, “apparently you called them “brainless, gaping idiots”, without actually using injurious epithets. How do you even do that?”

“It's called using your words, Stark,” he purrs, and no, Tony doesn't feel blood rushing _elsewhere_ at the sound of the low, velvety tones incongruous with the sharpness of the skinny man, “didn't you at least learn that in your first session?”

“Nope,” he says, “Doctor Selvig and I had a thorough discussion about the beer-making capabilities of Scandinavian countries instead. Very fascinating.” 

The man's eyes flash, and he sees the unspoken _challenge accepted_ in them. “Vikings,” he says, dismissively. 

“True,” Tony agrees, because he'd been woefully defeated in his discussion with Selvig, that man is viciously patriotic, “I can't actually pronounce any of the names. It's worse than Greek, seriously, how did they build countries with a language that has more consonants than vowels, it's ridiculous.”

“ _Sikke noget vrøvl_ ,” the man says, almost crossly. And Tony thinks, oh, that's right, _his name_.

“See, I didn't quite catch any of that, if you're going to try and out-sass me, you're going to have to do it in English, _Loki_.” It most certainly is not a victory, not even when he receives an eye-roll in return for his very skillful digging, seriously, does he know how many people he had to ask, people who didn't look ready to faint (or in Darcy's case, look slyly amused) at the mention of “hey, you know that skinny guy, the guy who looks like he's ready to either collapse or kill you, what's his name?” It'd been the group therapist who'd told him, the blonde, wholesome-looking posterboy for American Goodness who'd opened the doors for Loki the other day, Steve the Group Therapist who had finally gotten exasperated and said, “His name is Loki, Tony, stop calling him the mad woman in the attic, he's not some ghost that haunts SHIELD.” (In his defence, he'd only started calling him 'Bertha' a few orderlies back, _definitely_ after he'd asked that lethally curvaceous orderly—redheads, seriously, did they really feel the need to live up to stereotypes?—when that bristly-haired, squinty one had gleefully agreed—and unhelpfully told him nothing—that “that skinny dude” made very infrequent and unexpected appearances round the facility.)

“Congratulations, you know my name, would you like a gold star?” Loki says dryly. 

“Nah,” Tony says cheerfully, feeling ridiculously happy, nothing to do with the fact that he's never felt this alive in ages, just talking to this man, this thin, strange, mysterious, impossible man. “Got promoted to the lollipop stage a few days ago, they trust me not to choke on them now.” And isn't _that_ an image, especially judging by that almost imperceptible flush on Loki's pale face. 

They don't say anything for a while, just staring at each other, Loki's face carefully blank while Tony just beams, _it's ridiculous_ , just grins and grins because he doesn't know what this is, _you're sick, Tony_ , but he's not, he's fine and everything is fizzing in his veins, just sitting here next to Loki.

“So Doctor Selvig is your psychiatrist,” Loki says, finally. He's picking at his fingernails now, deliberately not looking at Tony as he speaks. 

“You mean he isn't yours? I thought everyone shared the same drug dealer,” Tony asks, now intrigued. “He put me on happy pills, I wasn't even sad in the first place, but hey, not gonna complain, _happy pills._ ”

“There are some studies that say fluoxetine is as effective as a placebo,” Loki points out. He's tugging at a hangnail, but he's looked up, squinting at Tony. “They'll probably change your meds again. Very soon, because you're not depressed, you're manic.”

Tony's not a bloody psychologist, or a psychiatrist (there's a difference, he's learned, one tries to talk you to death, _and how do you feel about that_ , the other makes you a case study and plies pills on you in trial and error). He's not even a biochemist with pharmaceutical inclinations, he's a fucking genius engineer. _Genius billionaire playboy philanthropist_ , someone had said. Not Perez, Perez doesn't like him, not after the time he had hacked into his website and changed all the photos to that of LOLcats. But back up, back up, what?

“Aw, darling, I'm just happy to see you,” Tony croons. Everything is fizzing like champagne bubbles—and there's a thought—and the world is crystalline, so sharp it's almost warped, warp speed, he's not depressed, _you're manic_.

Loki is frowning now. “Tony, stop. Stop. Didn't you tell Selvig about your moods?”

“What moods?” Tony says, and it's a curious sensation, this feeling of slight irritation crawling up his back like a lone ant. “I'm fine, everything's fine, that's what I keep telling people, but no one seems to fucking _listen_!”

It ends in a shout, and the room falls silent, everyone's looking at him now. Loki looks scared, the way a man looks when he's realised he's standing a little too close to the lion's den, what is this, Tony's not going to bite his head off. 

Then there's a hand on his shoulder, oh Steve, Steve the Group Therapist, Steve who probably eats his Wonderbread and all his vitamins to boot, Steve has a hand on his shoulder, and he's saying, “Tony, you need to calm down, come on--”

Tony shrugs him off, he's angry now, angry because everything was okay until it _wasn't_ , angry that he's even angry at all, everything is too much, he needs to hurry up but he also wants to stop, everything is racing on without him and it's frustrating, he doesn't know if he wants to dash out of the room or curl up into a ball, there's nothing to pry apart to pieces, there also isn't any alcohol to quiet things down, everything is too much, he just wants to be back in his workshop covered in grease and waist-deep in engine parts with a shot glass or two in hand, _you're sick, Tony_.

Steve is grabbing him hard by the shoulders now, he wants to tell him, lay off, Samson, but then his shoulder stings and he mumbles instead, “That fucking hurts, McCoy.” The edges of his vision are blurring in a dirty wash of colour--

The last thing he sees is Loki's face, pale and pinched, _don't cry, Loki_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Translation (according to the wonderful world wide web):
> 
>  _Sikke noget vrøvl_ \--What nonsense


	3. Chapter 3

When Tony wakes up, Darcy's in his room. She's poking at the restraints— _what the fuck_ —around his wrists. 

“I thought you said you didn't want to be Nurse Ratched,” he says, tongue thick in his mouth. Rust flakes.

Darcy smiles, and it's _relief_ written all over it. “Hey, McMurphy,” she says, squeezing his wrist briefly. “How're you feeling?”

He thinks about it. “I'm fine.” And he is. He's in his room in the loony bin, he's bereft of all his technology, he's being slowly but steadily weaned off liquid intoxicants, and he's in love. He's also been very rudely sedated, but wounded dignity aside, he's fine. 

“On a scale of one to ten,” Darcy says, “what's your mood?” 

Tony squints at her. “Are you a walking questionnaire now? I don't like questionnaires, they gave me a lot to fill out at the hospital, Pepper didn't tell them that I have a thing against forms, or you know, being handed stuff in general, all that paper, good grief.”

It's Darcy's turn to squint at him. “You're lucky I know that your default state is motormouth, I think if Steve were here, he might have freaked again.”

“Mmhmm,” he says absently, default state, he's thinking hard about what had happened in the rec room. His mind isn't buzzing anymore, the speedometer's back to a sedate forty miles per hour, it's not _slow_ , he remembers the suffocating weight on his shoulders, his chest, his mind, when he'd considered the entire bottle of single malt, when he'd first arrived here. Not slow. It's just...quiet, now. Weekday night, gotta stay in kind of quiet. 

“Did you have manic episodes before?” she asks, uncuffing him. “Doctor Selvig's really sorry for misdiagnosing you, but he says that according to your intake form, your main issues were heavy alcohol dependence and symptoms of depression.”

He remembers the questionnaires. He also remembers that Pepper had her own set to fill in, that while he'd been busy trying to keep his insides where they belonged, nauseous and shaky in his hospital bed, Pepper had had hushed conversations with doctors outside his door. _You're sick, Tony._

“Don't know,” he stretches, _ah_ , “though there were some very productive nights in the workshop. Or days, I didn't really look outside the window. Fuck, I'm hungry, get me a sandwich, woman.”

Darcy flicks his forehead. “Uh-huh, wrong PA, Mr Stark. But it's lunchtime, so you're welcome to join the unwashed masses in the dining hall.”

*

“This is an insult to meatloaves everywhere,” Tony says, poking at the brown heap on his plate. “I thought they were supposed to be more...solid. Fuck, it's _moving_.”

*

He's back in the rec room again, it feels a bit like kindergarten, _hey kiddos, nap time then snack time then play time!_ Steve is on bouncer duty again, and he smiles hesitantly at Tony. Tony waves back amiably. 

“Wanna play poker?” he asks, flopping down next to Loki on the same worn couch. 

Loki gives him the side eye. “And we'd bet with?” His voice is low, lower than usual, as if trying to cover up the rasp slurring each word. Huh, Tony thinks.

“Clothes are always a viable currency,” he suggests hopefully. Loki snorts.

“I'm not playing strip poker with you,” Loki says primly. Then, “I don't think Steve's delicate sensibilities could take it.” And is that a fucking _smirk_?

Tony grins. “Does that mean that my advances are thoroughly appreciated?”

Loki rolls his eyes. “Only because you're so transparent, Stark. And appreciation does not mean reciprocation, so you can keep dreaming. Now, poker stakes?”

Tony pouts, to no effect. “Fine,” he gives up, for now, “we'll play for smokes?” (He prefers his Cuban cigars, but a guy can only undergo so much withdrawal without compromising. Marlboro Lights are a _temporary_ thing.)

He gets a slow, sly smile, and fuck, Tony experiences a brief moment of vertigo.

*

(He later understands that Loki's smirk was totally justified, because that attractive fucker is also a fucking card shark. Tony loses his next fortnight's worth of cigarettes.)

*

The next few days pass quietly enough. There’s therapy, group therapy, even, but then there’s also occupational therapy, art therapy, equestrian therapy—“What the fuck, _no_ ,” he says to Darcy, when she hands him the brochure and tries to drag him outside. “I refuse to have anything to do with horses. They’re dangerous on both ends and fucking crafty in the middle. Why would I want anything with a mind of its own bobbing between my legs?”

Darcy looks at him slyly. “Really, Tony? If the rags are true, I’m pretty sure lots of people out there can testify otherwise.”

Tony stares at her. “It’s one thing to get sarcasm from Jarvis and Pepper, but it’s just wrong to get such innuendo from you. You’re, like, a baby.” (He’s not touchy about his age, okay, but it’s just not good for his ego.) 

She snorts. “Mister, I’m a college grad, bona fide adult, your dubious sensibilities and morals are intact. And hello, college, twenty-first century, need I say more?”

“Kids these days,” he says mournfully, and Darcy jabs him with her pen. He flaps the brochure at her in retaliation. “But no way, Ratched, horses are evil—and it’s _sunny_ out there.”

Darcy gives him one last jab in the ribs, and grabs the brochure out of his hands. “You’re not handsome enough to be Lestat,” she points out, and _hey_ , unfair, he could totally rock a cravat, “and anyway, Loki’s doing it too.” There’s another naughty, knowing look she slides his way. “I’m pretty sure you really don’t mean it, why _would_ you want anything with a mind of its own bobbing between your legs?”

Oh fuck. “Shut up,” he says, both horrified and impressed (and a little turned on, because now _that_ was descriptive), “oh god, just shut up, don’t even, oh _fuck._ ”

Darcy cackles. "There's a pool going on whether Loki lets you woo him or defenestrates you via a conveniently open window. Steve thinks it's sweet, but Nat and Clint have a hundred bucks going on the latter."

"Don't you people have restraints to roll up, hypodermics to fill?" Tony retorts, because a hundred bucks, seriously? That was _hurtful_.

She shrugs. "We can multitask. Watching you and Loki is better than daytime soaps anyway." Then her grin fades a little. "Be careful, Tony. This isn't one of those 'easy come, easy go' flings you have _outside_. You're here for a reason, and so is Loki."

He blinks. "What?"

"Just tread a little lightly, McMurphy," she says, rolling her eyes as if trying to convey _men, always so obtuse_ with the whites of her eyes—he gets that particular look a lot from Scary Natasha, not that he will _ever_ confess to being scared of her (except maybe to Selvig, or commiserating with Clint, Clint would know)—then drags him outside.

Fucking orderlies and their fucking voyeuristic amusement. Fucking _horses_.


	4. Chapter 4

He spends his afternoons in the rec room with Loki. He doesn’t see him anywhere else, never has besides _that one time with the horses_ , which Tony has vowed to never bring up again (his tailbone and dignity smart just thinking about it, though the sight of whippet-thin Loki effortlessly upright on a giant horse had made the venture almost worth it, the bastard’s smirk aside). SHIELD is big, but it’s basically bedrooms, the dining hall, the rec room and consultation rooms, the outside facilities not included. And Tony only ever sees Loki in the rec room, where Loki then imperiously places his cold, bony bare feet on Tony’s lap—and occasionally, Tony will succumb and rub them, just to feel, and to hear that pleased deep _purr_ Loki makes when he does—and they banter, trading sarcastic remarks. Or they play poker (Tony now owes Loki approximately 3 years’ worth of cigarettes by SHIELD supply rates, which is fucking _embarrassing_ , Tony is totally a professional player). It’s pretty mild, for “wooing”, as Darcy had put it, Tony thinks. Steve the Group Therapist would— _does_ , he corrects himself sourly, fucking nosy fuckers—approve. 

Tony is going slow, like wading through honey. And after years and years of his mind buzzing, his mind too filled with either ideas or just _fog_ …he’s fine. And maybe he’ll be fucking terrified that he’s fine, later on, when it’s been several placid, calm, pleasant days in a row, but _later_.

It’s lithium and Loki, therapy and time passing, tedium on occasion. Taking his medication, talking about his feelings—or more accurately, bullshitting and practicing evasion, he thinks Doctors Selvig and Foster are ready to throttle him, hah—doodling tally marks on his wall, sketching blueprints next to the tally marks, talking about everything and nothing with Loki, losing at cards to that _impossible_ , terrible man, and thinking, forget the five hundred fucking odd cigarettes, I’d give you the _world_.

It’s been a month, and _oh_ , he thinks, _oh Pepper, what have you done, putting me here_.

*

The thing is, Tony’s never asked. Oh sure, emaciation to this extent and considering the context (hello, _rehab_ ), it’s a very natural and obvious conclusion. But he never asks. He gets the feeling that he’d have to be a really insensitive and moronic douchebag to do that, and while Tony prides himself on being a tactless asshole most of the time, there’s Loki’s fickle temper to deal with—he’s oddly loathe to make the man mad at him, does that mean he’s a sap? _Fuck_ —and also, Scary Natasha. All other arguments are invalid, and he likes his balls where they are, so his ego can shut up now. 

Then one morning Loki’s in the dining hall and shit happens.

*

“This is disgusting,” he tells Natasha, who just looks at him like _he’s_ disgusting, which is again, totally unfair, point of comparison being the hashbrowns on his plate. Or, not-hashbrowns. Insolent and failed imitations. He pokes at them dolefully. “First they serve up overcooked eggs,” he’s still pissed that Coulson had blandly told him, sorry, firm yolks were necessary to placate some of the more paranoid patients at the facility, and anyway, Stark, just fucking _deal_ , “now they try to pass off this atrocity as one of the breakfast holy trinity?” He glares at the caterer behind the bar. The wizened old lady ignores him. 

Natasha looks amused. “Breakfast holy trinity?”

“You know,” he pushes his plate across the table and settles on his dry toast instead, hard to fuck _that_ up, “pancakes or waffles, French toast, fried breakfast?” He’s getting crumbs all over the table, but he munches messily anyway. Natasha has resumed the disgusted expression, and Tony grins, then chews with his mouth open, pausing to demonstrate the masticated results. 

“Charming,” Loki says dryly, suddenly beside him, and Tony startles enough that the mush of toast in his mouth ends up on the table. 

“Eugh,” he manages, then, “what the fuck, Loki?” Because in all the time he’s been at the loony bin (“We’re not a loony bin, we’re a distinguished rehabilitative sanitarium,” Coulson said, blandly), he’s never seen Loki in the dining hall. It’s like Loki only exists between two to six in the afternoon, and even then only in the rec room. “’Sup, Odette, it’s not twilight yet.”

Loki twitches, but says nothing as he slides into the seat next to Natasha. Tony blinks. Loki is tense, and he’s fidgeting, one foot rubbing insistently against the other under the table. Steve sits down next to Tony. Natasha is looking steadily at Steve. Tony blinks again. Okay.

“Hey Tony, hey Nat,” Steve says cheerfully—default setting, Tony thinks, that sort of goodwill is almost obnoxious. He nudges a tray of food across the table towards Loki. “Doctor Banner thought it was time to step up Loki’s recovery plan, start eating with people again.” Loki shoots Steve a dirty look.

“Good for you, Loki,” Natasha says, and Tony swears it sounded almost warm. He looks at Loki, whose fidgeting has grown even more pronounced, agitated. Huh. He looks at the tray. Buttered toast. Sliced fruit. Orange juice. Chocolate milk—Tony squints, no, too thick. Milkshake? Doesn’t seem like a very big deal.

“Looks, uh, good,” he says, going for encouraging. Natasha returns her attention to him, and it’s a sharp, warning look. Steve nudges his foot. _What_ , Tony feels like protesting, but shuts up.

“You know the rules, Loki, twenty minutes.” Steve looks at his watch. “You should start.”

And the twenty minutes that follows reminds Tony of a wildlife documentary he watched a couple years ago, hungover. It’d been about a pride of lions, and Loki right now reminds him of one, all restless, agitated and angry and still with a proud tilt to his head. Loki picks at his fruit, avoids the toast, sips minimally at his juice. The milkshake had, right at the start, been viciously pushed to the edge of the tray. 

Natasha kicks him under the table. _Stop watching_ , she mouths at him. He shrugs, fine, and starts doodling a rough sketch of a potential hashbrown maker on his napkin. Unforgivable, seriously.

Then Steve sighs, and Tony looks back up. Steve looks anxious, exasperated, and Natasha is silent, watchful and wary, as if tensed to spring. 

The tray is still practically full, almost untouched. Loki looks mulishly defiant, and has gone very, very still.

Tony is suddenly very aware that he is an unnecessary party to a potentially FUBAR situation.

“You know the rules, Loki,” Steve is saying again, sounding tired and very, very careful. What fucking rules, Tony wants to say, but he doesn’t. Loki looks ready to scratch Steve’s eyes out, or bolt completely. Steve pushes the milkshake back towards Loki, who snarls in response. 

“No,” he spits. “And you can’t make me.” He shoves the glass away again, violently, and liquid slops over the rim. 

“You were doing so well, Loki, please don’t stop now,” Steve says cajolingly. “I know it’s a new situation, but you know meals are non-negotiable. You didn’t finish, so it’s extra Ensure as supplement.”

Tony mouths, _Ensure?_ at Natasha. She kicks him again, fucking _ow_ , before getting up and leaving the table. She returns with another glass of milkshake, and sets it beside the first. 

“No,” Loki says, angrily, viciously, then in a blur of motion, sweeps up both glasses and flings them at the wall across the room. There’s an explosion of glass and brown, viscous liquid, and the once-white wall now has a perfect example of a Rorschach test on it. Tony gapes a little, because what the fuck is going on, _what the fuck_. (And also, _whoa_ , Odette has got mileage.)

What happens next is a flurry of arms and shouting and chairs scraping. "Hang on a sec," he begins, but Loki is hauled up, frogmarched from the room, and very quickly the metaphorical dust has settled. He blinks again—the table is vacated except for him, the hall is carefully, awkwardly silent, and ‘Ensure’ is slowly oozing and dripping its way down the walls. It looks a bit macabre.

"Oh Pepper," he mutters, suddenly, irrationally furious. "Fuck. _What. The. Fuck._ " 

He keeps forgetting he’s in a loony bin.


	5. Chapter 5

It’s three days before Tony sees Loki again. Three days of an empty lap, of playing Go Fish with Steve (“sorry, Tony, that’s the only card game I know how to play”—“seriously, Wonderbread, that’s just _wrong_ ”), of feeling like he is in stasis. Three days, and Tony feels like there’s an itch in his chest, a terrible sensation and pressure under his sternum, pressing on his heart.

*

Tony tells Foster on the fourth day, “This is fucking ridiculous. I barely even know the guy. I barely even _see_ him.” He pauses. “Wait, why the fuck am I telling you this?”

Doctor Foster just blinks her brown doe eyes at him, and there’s vague amusement. “Because you were originally ranting about how the, I quote—“ she peers down at her notes ”—‘the fucking order of yenta orderlies suddenly decided to play evil witch in _Tangled_ ’.”

(And it’s true. Tony’s asked about Loki. He hasn’t stopped asking, but all he gets from Natasha or Steve or Clint or Darcy or even fucking Coulson are stonewalling variations along the line of “Loki isn’t well, he’s not taking visitors right now”—the latter bit to which he’d pointed out to Coulson, “it’s not a visitor if it’s a fellow jailbird”. 

Coulson had just again, _blandly_ —didn’t that guy have any other fucking expression?—told him, “It’s a distinguished rehabilitative sanitarium, not a prison, Mr Stark.”

“Yeah, well, the eggs say otherwise.”

"Your lithium, Mr Stark. And please drink all of your water this time.")

“So sue me for that reference, there’s only fucking Disney movies to watch around here, I swear, it’s like kindergarten, seriously, where’s the porn?” Then Tony narrows his eyes at Foster. “Are you in on the pool? Oh God, yes, you _are_.”

She smiles, a little. “No, actually. Though I have to say that it’s hard to miss your interaction with Loki. Your mood seems improved after spending time with him.” She scribbles something down on her notepad.

Tony tries very hard to make it look like he’s not trying to read her notes upside down. Foster raises an eyebrow and tilts the paper inwards. Whatever.

“That said,” she prompts, “you were telling me about how you feel about Loki’s—“ she clears her throat, squints at her notes again “—‘stint in solitary’?” Foster looks up, and throws him an exasperated look. “You know we’re not actually a prison, right?”

“That’s what Coulson said.” Tony waggles a finger at her. “Never trust a guy with only one expression. Though, fuck, he must be hell of a poker player, wonder if he’d beat Loki, now that’s a match that oughta be televised—“

“Tony,” Foster interrupts, patiently. “Let’s focus, shall we?” 

Tony stops. Thinks. “No,” he says. 

*

Tony’s never been in love. He’s Tony fucking Stark, delight of the gossip rags and notorious manslut. He doesn’t do _attachment_ —heaven forbid Foster ever mines this issue, he damn well isn’t going to bring it up.

He’s never been in love. There’s Pepper, and he _worships_ her, because she’s a fucking queen and you’d have to be stupid to not recognize that. But this gnawing inside his ribs, this grip around his lungs ( _his heart_ )—it’s alien and it’s fucking scary.

Tony barely knows Loki. He can’t be in love. 

It’s just the mania. Probably.

*

He trails into the rec room behind Darcy, and he’s telling her, “I’m bored, Ratched, there’s no one to play with me—“

Loki’s sitting on the leather couch nearest the windows. He looks tired, pale, like he’s trying to play camouflage with the off-white couch. There’s a tube going up his nose.

Darcy pats Tony on the back. “Play nice,” she hisses, “or Steve will have your head.”

“What? Nah, Wonderbread’s a fucking BFG,” Tony says absently, staring. _Stop watching_.

The door closes behind him. Loki’s staring back at Tony now, and it’s not trepidation, but there’s a faint nervousness nonetheless, and the proud, defiant twist to Loki’s mouth ironically accentuates the expression. 

Tony sits down next to him.

“So.” The tube is hooked over Loki’s ear, a dead end stopper to it. Tony focuses on Loki’s face, the gauntness, the dark circles under his eyes. The way Loki is looking at him like his opinion _matters_. “The aliens didn’t probe you anywhere else, I hope.”

Loki chokes, just a little, but when he looks back up, there’s _relief_ written all over his face, and he’s smirking again. Attaboy, Tony thinks. There’s my badass card shark. ( _Mine_ , but he doesn’t focus on that thought. He tries very hard not to. Fuck's sake, he's not a creep.)

“Shut up, Stark,” Loki rasps, voice crackling like tracing paper. It’s still velvety, fuck he loves that British accent, it’s all Jarvis’ fault, but it’s like the material has been ruffled. Huh. Metaphors. “It’s a nasogastric tube. An NG tube. It’s…easier…for me, this way.”

Tony studies the pinched face. He doesn’t think about how he wants to kiss the arch of Loki’s cheekbones, the top of his nose, the parchment skin stretched over his forehead. His _mouth_. “Okay,” he says, easily. “Poker? Steve’s been an absolute killjoy.”

Loki smiles. It’s a sharp—everything about him is sharp—wicked grin, and Tony wants to do anything and everything he can to makes sure that expression stays. 

Tony barely knows Loki. He can’t be in love. 

“Strip poker?” he asks, hopefully.


	6. Chapter 6

Pepper comes to see him every Wednesday. It’s not a big deal; she comes, she hugs him, she makes him sign a stack of paperwork, he begs the use of her StarkCom/StarkPhone/StarkPadd and ignores the paperwork, she hugs him, she leaves. It’s not a big deal.

(The first time she’d visited after she’d first dropped Tony off at SHIELD, there’d been bright eyes and pursed lips and too much emotion in the ‘hello’ hug. Don’t cry, Pep. He’d asked her if she missed him, and she’d promptly replied, “No.”)

*

The tally marks above his bed are getting ridiculous—it’s been 5, 10, 15, 20…47 days, Tony counts, whoop dee doo, and he’s getting cabin fever.

“I’m getting cabin fever,” he tells Darcy, “Get me the fuck out of here, Ratched.”

She snorts, and hands him his cup of pills and a glass of water. “Bottoms up, McMurphy.” 

Tony agreeably swigs the lot, then pulls a face. “For all I know this could be part of Coulson’s evil plan for world domination. You know, mind control pills.” He waggles his hands at her. “Whooooo.”

Darcy slaps at his hands, and _ow_ , he snatches them back and pouts. “Suck it up, Tony, you’re making progress.” She pauses at the door on her way out, and it’s a _wicked_ smile. “Cabin fever? There’s always the horses, go for a jaunt in the great outdoors.”

He groans. “I thought we agreed to never mention that again, never bring it up again, Ratched, or I swear—“

“I have photos,” chirps Darcy. There’s an iPhone—and what the fuck, it's a matter of professional pride, Stark tech is infinitely better than fucking _Apple_ —in her hand, and she waves it at him.

Tony makes a grab for them and falls off the bed. Fucking _ow_.

* 

It’s Loki’s head pillowed in his lap today, and he’s idly twirling the black hair with his fingers. It’s slightly greasy, but it’s soft and he hums, begins braiding. Fuck, Disney movies and braiding each other’s hair, this place is turning him into a fucking seven year-old _girl_.

“Dartmouth, huh,” Tony snarks, and really, all the stereotypes that spring to mind, fucking precious ammo. “WASPy.”

Loki reaches up and swats his nose, and seriously, what is with all the physical abuse today? “Don’t forget misogynistic, athletic, money-minded, fratty. Douchebags all round.” He snorts. “It’s just a college, Tony, don’t get all narrow-minded on me. _You_ went to MIT, you don’t see me asking you where your geek glasses are.”

Fair enough. Though—“Trust fund baby?”

Loki sits up, slowly, and a sharp elbow jabs him in the leg—knowing Loki, the bastard did it on purpose. He arches an eyebrow. “That’s rich, coming from you.”

And, well, that’s true. But still. “So?” He prods. Welcome back, Tony the Jerk. Even Klonopin is no match for you.

“Obviously,” Loki huffs, and it’s a very resentful huff. “Don’t play stupid, Stark, it doesn’t suit you.” The NG tube had been removed a few days ago; he looks better, pale and bony as opposed to ashen and emaciated. Loki folds into himself, sticks his feet under Tony’s thighs, chilly even through his jeans.

“You know,” Tony tells him, not a little exasperated, “I’m an actual fucking _genius_ , but half the time you’re involved, I swear, I _do not have a fucking idea what’s going on_. And it’s fucking _aggravating_.” 

Loki stares at him with a scornful—scornful, what, how is that even possible—expression of disbelief. “You’re serious. You don’t know who I am?” The last bit comes out incredulous, but Tony detects an undertone of relief, _wonder_. What the fuck?

“No,” he begins, but Steve the BFG, seriously, he has got to stop with all the kiddie references, comes over and interrupts. 

“Hey Loki,” Steve says apologetically, “your family’s here to see you.”

Loki _hisses_. “I don’t want to see them,” he spits. “Tell them to fuck off.”

Tony blinks. Because, whoa. ( _Takes one to know one._ )

“Loki,” and seriously, it’s like whenever Steve talks to Loki, he has to _wheedle_ , “be reasonable. They drove all the way up here to see you, at least let them see how you are.”

“No,” Loki says.

Steve slumps a little, shakes his head disappointedly, _disapprovingly_ —then pulls at his wire to speak into it. “Loki doesn’t want to see visitors today. Give Mr and Mrs Odinson our apologies.”

Wait. What?

“ _Odinson_?” he says accusatorily, “Your dad is Odin Odinson—and seriously, what kind of person names his kid the same thing twice, that’s just sad—your dad is the boss of my main business competitor?”

Loki shrugs. “Fraternizing with the enemy?”

Steve looks baffled. “You didn’t know?”

“It’s not my fault, I don’t exactly schmooze with the competition at galas and balls, okay!” Tony says defensively.

“Too busy buying out the bar,” Loki murmurs, and Tony points a finger at him.

“Nuh-uh, _Odile_ , and anyway those functions would be past your bedtime.”

Loki looks affronted. 

*

Pepper comes to see him every Wednesday. Loki’s family have only come twice since Loki’s admission, Darcy whispers to him, _Loki’s been here nearly half a year_. 

Tony wonders if all rich families are alike. Dammit, Tolstoy.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apologies if I've insulted anyone re: Ivy League stereotypes. I go to a college on a completely different continent.


	7. Chapter 7

“Apparently I have control issues,” Loki says, not looking up from his magazine. He says the two words like they’re mud, face deadpan but managing to convey a whole new level of disgust nonetheless. Tony is impressed. Poker showdown, ladies and gents, in the red corner we have Coulson, man of the mono-expression, but in the blue corner, Loki, all-time bitchface champion and card shark, place your bets—

Loki nudges him with an elbow, dammit, ow, those things are like fucking _knives_. “You know you’re saying all of that out loud, right?” He sounds amused, flips a page. Tony squints and tries to read over Loki’s shoulder.

“ _’Town & Country’_?” he says incredulously. “Loki, babe, I know what this looks like, but we aren’t actually in a Merchant-Ivory film.” Though that did make for some nice imagery. _Very_ nice imagery. 

“Pity,” Loki says, not looking up. “I look rather _dashing_ in a waistcoat.” The word is stressed, curls low and velvety around a smirk. And fuck if that mocking British accent doesn’t make Tony want to do unspeakable things. Well, not unspeakable, but—if he thinks too much about it he’s giving up in his self-restraint. So.

“Control freak,” he tweaks Loki’s nose, and coos inside when Loki scrunches it. It’s like watching a tiny gerbil attempt a bitchface. He gets swatted, and this, this physicality, it’s a very troubling basis for a relationship, and he tells Loki so. “Though,” he adds, “if this physicality were to include some canoodling…”

Loki flips the magazine shut. “Mr Stark, I know that some of the orderlies out there are concerned about cradle-robbing, but the use of such archaic vocabulary really isn’t helping your case.”

He splutters, because what, “ _Cradle-robbing_ , fuckers, I’m in my fucking _prime_ , I’m the very soul of youth and virility!” 

“I don’t know, Tony,” Loki says lazily, “you’re old enough to be my father. Well, if you had been extremely precocious about it. You were for everything else.” The handsome fucker is _smirking_ , and Tony just wants to kiss it off. (Never mind that the context of the conversation is disturbing. It is, after all, his promiscuity in question.)

They’re curled up next to each other on the largest couch, and Tony thinks, with a touch of hysteria as faint as thunder rumbling in the distance, that this would be incredibly domestic, if not for the whole nuthouse scenario. Because Steve, while nice to look at, is not an ideal fixture in his ideal house where Loki and him have sex over every horizontal surface. How’s _that_ for fucking domestic?

Loki’s looking at him.

“Er. Tell me I didn’t just say that out loud,” Tony tries. He needs a brain to mouth filter sometimes. Only sometimes. 

“No,” Loki says. It’s 6 o’clock; he’s going back to his room to, (Loki said, furious and sour,) “get bloody fattened up like your bloody Goodyear Blimp”. “But your face is ridiculous, it’s like watching an entire train of thought play itself out.” 

*

It’s weird. Tony takes his meds like a good boy, swallows them down _bump bump_ his throat, drinks his water, goes for his blood tests. He feels parched all the time (“drink your water, Tony, I told you”), and he doesn’t want to—couldn’t, too light-headed to—think too much about how his hands had developed a tremor for the first week, he remembers thinking, _how the fuck am I going to solder shit, what the fuck_ , and then he’s puffy around the edges—he squints at the bathroom mirror in mornings; his jawline is rounder and he’s definitely lost all semblance of being fit. His body is rebelling against the quiet in his head. Chemistry. Fuck. Not his area of expertise.

His brain feels like it’s at a standstill. Stuck in a swamp. It’s quiet, his thoughts are passing at a sedate pace, he’s oh so very rational. 

(He’s _bored_.)

He starts cheeking his pills.

*

He wanders into the lobby on Thursday afternoon; Loki is outside in equestrian therapy (“They’re _evil_ ”, “Don’t be ridiculous, Tony”) and he’s bored, bored _bored_. He flops down onto the chaise lounge—“Who puts a chaise lounge in an _office_ lobby, this place is driving me crazy,” Tony tells the receptionist. She glares at him. 

“Not an office, Mr Stark,” Coulson says mildly, walking though the glass doors entrance. He’s followed by a strapping blonde man. “Mr Odinson, if you would just wait here, I’ll get someone to find Loki for you.”

Tony blinks. Sits up. “Wait, _you’re_ Odinson? My rival is an MMA fighter guy who looks like he stores his brain in his biceps?”

Coulson pauses as he passes by him, and gives him a blandly withering look. “It’s a good thing that you have a board of directors and Miss Potts to keep your company afloat, Mr Stark.”

“No,” Odinson booms, and really, _booms_ , it’s like nature was really determined to get proportions right with this guy, voice to match the build and all, “that is my father, Odin. I am but an engineer in his company.”

And Loki accused _him_ of archaic speech. “You didn’t grow up around here, did you? And also, engineers rock, okay, I’m an engineer, a genius engineer, yeah, but engineers can take over the world.”

Odinson looks bemused. “That is correct, I grew up and studied in Denmark. Loki was the smart one, he persuaded my father to let him study in England, and then America, here.” He sounds wistful, fond. Tony narrows his eyes.

“So, what’s the deal with Loki and your family, anyway? Very _Rachel Getting Married_ , have you seen that movie, my PA made me watch it with her, she cried all over my sleeve,” Tony prods hopefully. 

“None of your business, Tony,” Loki snaps, walking in. He looks furious, and a little sunburnt. Tony wants, very suddenly, to kiss the red tip of Loki’s nose. “What are you doing here, Thor? I already said I didn’t want to see any of you.”

Thor shoots Tony a guilty look sideways. “But _broder_ , we’ve missed you. _Mor_ cries because you won’t let us visit; she misses you dearly. And _fader_ —“

“Don’t talk to me about what _fader_ thinks or wants or says, I don’t give a damn,” Loki hisses, the one-word lapse into Danish startling and as alien as the loathing and anger Tony can see vibrating through the thin man. Loki’s not a pleasant man, fuck no, but he’s generally disinterested and disengaged from such intense emotions (dining hall debacle aside, because that was _that_ ); he’s a sly, sarcastic, clever, clever man who drives Tony crazy and never has Tony seen him so...savage.

Thor stops then, frowning. “You are being unfair, Loki. And childish.” 

Loki spits, “ _Gå ad helvede til_ ,” and turns around to walk back out. He tries to shrug off Thor, who reaches out a giant hand to grab him by the shoulder. “ _Pis af_!”

Thor doesn’t drop his hand, keeps it on Loki. His hand looks ridiculous on Loki, a baseball mitt on the tiny knob of Loki’s protruding clavicle. “You look better, Loki.”

Loki stills. And Tony sees him close his eyes, sigh—“Don’t come back, Thor.” He walks back out into the sun, the glass doors swinging shut behind him.

“Well, that was very informative, and very unhelpful,” Tony says to no one in particular. He looks at Thor, the big beefy blonde man now pouting. “Whoa there, big guy, no need to give me the puppy-dog face, I’m not the one you need to aim that at.”

“I had thought that after all these months, he might have understood,” Thor mutters, all morose, sitting down next to Tony. Tony pats him on the shoulder.

“Still no idea what shit happened, that’s par for the course with Loki, believe me—but take it easy, big guy.” He cocks his head. “You really not going to come see him anymore?”

Thor shrugs sullenly. 

“Persistence, in my very fleeting experience, works,” Tony grins at him. “Come by again, big guy. See you next week. Heck, tomorrow. Our calendar’s free.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Translation (according to the wonderful world wide web):
> 
>  _broder_ \--brother  
>  _mor_ \--mum  
>  _fader_ \--father
> 
>  _Gå ad helvede til_ \--Go to hell  
>  _Pis af_ \--Piss off


	8. Chapter 8

It turns out that Thor takes things very literally, and Loki lets Tony know how he feels about Thor’s inability to understand Tony’s particular brand of humour (“figure of speech, seriously, how was I supposed to know he’d be so—“) by adding him to his cold war campaign. 

Tony’s single attempt at pleading ignorance of the apparent literal-mindedness of Danish bodybuilding engineers does not go down well, ending with Loki hissing, “I didn’t want to see him _at all_ , you idiot,” before slamming his door closed in Tony’s face. Tony mentally gives Loki points for well-timed melodrama as “ _tåbe, dum, ønske jer alle ville gå til helvede, forlade mig ALENE_!” is shrieked through the closed door. The tantrum is completed with the sound of something slamming against the other side of the door but clattering harmlessly on the ground, and Tony gives _himself_ points for inventing an apparently Loki-proof StarkPadd. He’d managed to wheedle Coulson into letting Loki keep the one Tony had given him. 

“Looks like you’re sleeping on the couch for the foreseeable future,” someone says gleefully next to him. Tony turns to give Clint his best _bitch, please_ look. 

“Would, Barton, but last I heard from Darcy, you’re already occupying it,” Tony snarks back. “How’s the very long engagement with Natasha going?”

Clint’s cackling peters out and he gives Tony the middle finger.

“Help,” Tony says, deadpan. “Help, police brutality, help.”

“Not a prison,” Coulson says, both he and Wonderbread Steve coming up behind them. “Loki,” he calls through the door, “Loki, open the door.”

“ _FUCK ALL OF YOU_!” 

“He really has a set of lungs, doesn’t he,” Tony says, admiringly. 

*

Everything goes downhill after that, though, and if Tony were any more childish he would blame the sudden appearance of the Odinsons. Or okay, he is childish and he’s fucking blaming Thor and Loki’s stupid parents for crashing the party and making Loki angry and sad, which in turn makes him (Tony) pathetic and useless. Which is totally reasonable, he tells Doctor Foster, he hasn’t spoken to Loki in three days, break-ups always make people turn into utter losers.

Doctor Foster looks interested, “So are you saying that you and Loki were in a relationship, Tony?”

Shit. “That’s not what I said,” he replies automatically. 

“You have to be in a relationship to begin with in order to break up,” Foster says patiently, both eyebrows raised in a _go on, explain_ expression.

“Are we seriously going to analyze my tendencies for hyperbole?” Tony demands, because for fuck’s sake, he’s already gotten into shit for his “unfortunate flair with words”. “Loki and I aren’t—“

He thinks of Loki’s head on his thigh, the feel of Loki’s hair sliding through his fingers. The secretive smile Loki had whenever Tony murmured into his ear wild promises of running away to a tropical island, just the two of them, where they could fuck and be crazy evil geniuses and fuck some more, without anyone bothering them. The way Loki would lean into Tony after meals, hands and feet rubbing together in an unconscious attempt to self-soothe away the mental discomfort, the way his fingers would use his forearm as an invisible keyboard to play out frantic sonatinas. The way Tony would let him, keeping up a steady nonsensical monologue the entire time. 

He thinks of the lightheadedness he felt, _dry drowning_ , the first time and every time he sees Loki.

He doesn’t know how to finish his sentence. 

Doctor Foster is looking at him strangely now. It’s pitying and sympathetic all at once, but there’s an underlying expression Tony’s seen on Darcy and Natasha and Pepper (definitely Pepper) several times. It’s exasperation. _Men, always so obtuse_.

“I’m in love with him,” Tony says, stilted, because it’s one thing to declare undying love and dedication to a man who’s looking at you with indulgent amusement, the way an adult might look at a child who announces that he’s going to marry his favourite person when he grows up. It’s another to actually say it and realize that he means it so much that he’s confiding to a psychologist how he’s a pathetic sad sack who can’t function being away from said object of affections. 

Fuck.

If only it was just his libido. _Fuck_.

*

Pepper does look at him with exasperation, and Tony informs her that he does not appreciate aspersions on his intelligence, verbal or not. Pepper rolls her eyes at him and thrusts out another sheaf of forms for him to sign. 

Tony takes it, but uses it to wave around in demonstration of his indignation. “I’m serious, Pep,” he hisses. “I’m supposed to be a notorious philanderer, I can’t go and fall in love. I have a reputation to uphold!”

She arches an eyebrow. “Your priorities need reshuffling, Mr Stark.” She shoves the paperwork insistently at him, but it’s obvious that what she really means is _you idiot, that’s the lousiest excuse to not be in love I have ever heard_.

“I blame you, Pepper,” Tony tells her. “I was perfectly fine until you decided to have me dry out like a raisin and swallow chemicals best left in robotics than in the human body. Now I’m in a nuthouse and I’ve gone and fallen in love with an inmate, that’s like _inbreeding_.”

“You make it sound so sordid,” comes a drawl behind him, and oh _fucking hell_. He looks at Pepper, betrayed, but she just smirks at him. 

“Sordid, uh, yeah,” Tony tries feebly, turning around. Loki looks amused, but it seems studied. “Uh. Hey.”

“Tony.” Wryly. 

“So what’s up, princess,” Tony says, going for blithe cheerfulness, nonchalant in the face of danger. “Finally mixing with the hoi polloi?”

There’s a pause, during which Pepper sighs and Loki just looks at him, undecipherable, a pale sliver of a man in the doorway.

“Steve wouldn’t let me get new books unless I left my room,” he says, finally. He straightens up. Scaffolding. “Are you coming with?”

He smiles at Tony, but it’s uncertain. 

Pepper quietly begins to pack away the paperwork. Her hand passes over Tony’s to tug away the sheaf in his hand, but there’s a subtle, warm squeeze.

“Yeah,” Tony says. “Of course I am.” _Voluntary apnea_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Translation (according to the wonderful world wide web):
> 
>  _tåbe, dum, ønske jer alle ville gå til helvede, forlade mig ALENE_ \--stupid, stupid, wish you all would go to hell, leave me ALONE


	9. Chapter 9

Loki’s decision to leave his room didn’t mean that he forgave Tony’s “arbitrary meddling in other people’s business”, and he tells Tony so in a tone of voice not unlike a child who knows he has been bested but wants to have the last word anyway. 

Tony tells Loki that, and is given a dirty look in response. 

“Shut up,” Loki says, extremely cross, “and help me carry all these books.” He unceremoniously dumps several hardbacks into Tony’s arms, lets Tony grapple and flail with them for a few moments before pushing more at him. 

“Are you serious, Belle?” Tony wheezes, and silently congratulates himself for yet another Disney reference; he should probably get Pepper to actually make that anonymous donation of sci-fi DVDs to the place. Maybe he could convince Loki to cosplay as Ripley. He struggles to find a more comfortable grasp on the books. “Do you mind, I feel like I’m being stabbed in the ribs by Tolstoy.”

Loki rolls his eyes and extracts a thin book from where its spine had been digging into Tony’s tenth rib. “Don’t be such a philistine; it’s Solzhenitsyn.” He tosses the book back on top of the pile in Tony’s arms and proceeds to waltz out of his room, that sneaky bastard, hands dangling free at his sides, while Tony curses loudly and stumbles after him.

*

“…and then, he crawled out of the washing machine, scaring _mor_ half to death!” Thor chuckles and slaps Loki on the back, the smaller man involuntarily jolting forward under the impact. Loki scowls. 

“If the both of you are done amusing yourselves with tales of my childhood escapades, I think Thor can leave. Now.” He arches an eyebrow and tilts his head meaningfully towards the rec room doors. 

Tony lounges back in his armchair. “Aww, Crookshanks. He only just got here, let’s not kick him out just yet.” To Thor, he gleefully adds, “Go on.” He is getting plenty of dirt on Loki, but mostly he’s just egging Thor on to see Loki’s various expressions of mortification. He’s particularly fond of the one where Loki goes faintly pink around his zygomatic arches.

Loki kicks Tony in the shins, and _ow motherfucking ow_ , Loki’s wearing his pointy-toed oxfords today. “This is all your fault,” he hisses at Tony. “Thor’s been here every day this week.”

Thor says mildly, “Thor is also here, today,” but Loki kicks _him_ and he cleverly shuts up. 

*

There’s a collection of pills tucked into the lining of the carpet, where it meets the wall and is loose around the edges. Tony avoids looking in that direction of his room, as if his gaze would make the stash suddenly conspicuous.

Darcy, one afternoon, says, “I should probably get you to clean your room once in a while, I think there are dust bunnies breeding in the corners.”

And Tony deliberately does not look, instead whining, “Coulson told me this was a five-star hotel!”

He later flushes the pills, when Darcy leaves. He doesn’t know why he didn’t in the first place.

*

Loki is sitting next to him in the dining hall, moodily poking at his plate of carbonara. He is also playing footsie with Tony’s right foot under the table, of which Steve is clearly unaware. Tony bites his tongue as Loki—barefoot today—runs a toe up his leg. _Steve’s innocence is at stake_ , he chants to himself, _must not corrupt Wonderbread, must not corrupt Wonderbread_.

Someone snorts quietly, and Tony looks up to see Natasha smirking at him. “Fuck off,” he whispers at her through gritted teeth. 

“Enjoying your lunch, Tony?” she asks solicitously. Tony imagines Clint with Natasha, and feels slightly better.

“Just fine, thanks,” Tony manages, just as Loki starts tickling him behind his knee. With his toes. His goddamn _cold as fuck_ toes. He chokes a little on the pasta he’s been chewing on for the last five minutes, and Steve looks concerned.

“All right there, Tony?” BFG says, looking ready to perform the Heimlich maneuver. Then he looks at Loki’s plate and says, dismayed, “Loki, you’re not even halfway done!”

The icy toes retreat.


	10. Chapter 10

The thing about not sleeping, thinks Tony, is that it’s so _boring_. It’s not like he wants to stay awake so he can tinker just a little bit more on this new stream of code that’s been brewing in the corner of his brain—writing out programming language by hand is not so much tedious as it is nonsensical when your handwriting is no better than chicken scratches and your letters have no sense of personal space. In fact, he wants to _sleep_ , and it’s so very obnoxious of his brain to not shut down so he can toodle off to dreamland already. For fuck’s sake. 

He lies awake, counts the number of blinks it takes before the sun comes sliding through the blinds like goddamn relief. 

*

Thor, oddly enough, has received an invitation to breakfast. Loki does not look amused by this, and demonstrates his supreme displeasure by throwing salt and sugar sachets at his brother’s face. 

“Hey,” says Tony mildly, “I needed that for the sentient being on my plate.” He stabs at his scrambled eggs. The eggs mournfully wobble, slide to the corner of his plate with a greasy yellow smear. 

Thor hands him the salt while cheerfully pouring three sachet’s worth of glucose into his coffee. 

Loki growls in disgust and refuses to talk to either of them for the rest of the meal. 

*

“I’d like to talk about your moods,” says Doctor Selvig. He peers at Tony over his clipboard. “How have you been feeling lately?”

“Meh,” says Tony. It seems like the most appropriate response.

Selvig scribbles something. Maybe “meh” means something else in Danish?

“No, it doesn’t,” Selvig says without looking up, still scribbling. 

“ _Holy fucking shit are you reading my mind_ ,” Tony hisses, waving a pillow at Selvig and hoping that it works like garlic on vampires. Not the sparkly ones, obviously. The _real_ vampires with the bat capes.

“Again, no,” says Selvig, snorting. “You said everything out loud.” He looks at Tony, then, squints. “Have you been taking your lithium as prescribed?”

“Yes,” says Tony, flatly. Never let it be said than Anthony Stark was a bad liar when the situation called for it. “They taste like rainbows and sunshine, like friendship on a flowery spring day.”

Selvig twists his lips into something wry, scribbles some more. Tony can’t read Danish shorthand, though not for lack of trying. It looks even worse than his own handwriting, which he can only decipher afterwards if he was writing sober in the first place. “If you’re writing ‘Tony is a smartass and needs a spanking’, please put Scary Natasha in charge of that. Or Loki. I really need some peer support, doc.”

“No.”

“You’re no fun,” Tony sulks, flopping back and hugging the garlic pillow.

*

The nights keep getting longer, judging by the number of blinks before it’s sunrise and Darcy’s wake-up call and terrible eggs and Loki’s reluctant smile over breakfast. 

*

They’re back in the rec room, and Tony doesn’t know what day it is. Day _uno_ he thinks, and maybe he’s self-aware enough to notice his own hysteria in that thought, but haha, _day uno_ for a day when he’s playing Uno, every day’s a new day. He slaps a card down: “’Draw Two’, loser!”

Clint swears under his breath and picks up another card from the deck to add to his own fistful of cards. On Clint’s left, Natasha yawns, leans back in her chair. “You’re terrible at this game,” she observes, idly waving the two cards she has left as a fan. 

“Fuck off, Nat,” Clint grumbles. “And it’s your turn, so shut up and play already.”

She flicks a red ‘8’ onto the table. “Uno,” she says sweetly.

Loki scoffs. He’s back on the NG tube, because ever since Thor’s breakfast appearance a few days ago, he’d decided to sulk by refusing his Ensure. Steve had been Very Disappointed, but Loki apparently had developed the ability to ignore Wonderbread’s epic sadface, so. “Not so fast, Romanov,” Loki smirks and slides a red ‘7’ forward. “Uno,” and raises his last card between his twiggy fingers like a cigarette.

“Okay, I would just like to state for the record that you two are fucking card sharks, how are you both even cheating at this game, it’s like _baby_ Go Fish for _toddlers_.” Tony kicks Loki’s ankle under the table, and winces when his foot makes contact with bone. To his credit, Loki kicks back. Harder. 

“Don’t be a sore loser, Stark,” Natasha purrs, and her smile is so, _so_ evil, he feels bad for Clint. He says that out loud, because hey, solidarity.

“Nah, man,” says Clint despondently. He’s counting the number of cards he has left. “I’m used to it. _Eighteen_ , are you fucking kidding me?”

“Uno,” says Steve, putting a blue ‘7’ down. 

*

Hey, he wants to say to Loki. Hey. Would you stay with me in a basement where day and night doesn’t matter and I’d build you everything you ever wanted and didn’t know you wanted? 

(Would you stay even when I drink more coffee and alcohol than I drink water, even when I don’t sleep for hours and hours and more, when my nails are permanently black with grease and I can’t remember my own name because there’s just so much and also not enough, because I promise at the very least I’ll always remember _your_ name and the feel of your hair between my dirty hands and the way your smile feels like a knife sliding between my ribs—)


	11. Chapter 11

“Hey,” Tony says one day, prostrate on their favourite couch (Loki’d actually _hissed_ at the patient who’d had the unfortunate ignorance of occupying it before their arrival) while poking at Loki’s side. His fingers keep unerringly running into the sharp protrusion of ribs and Loki’s expression is turning distinctly annoyed. “ _Hey_.”

Loki looks like he’s contemplating the effectiveness of ignoring Tony, before capitulating to common sense. “ _What_ ,” he says, flatly. He’s reading some weird book that’s obviously older than the invention of the internet; Loki’s nose occasionally twitches like he wants to sneeze but won’t deign to the indignity of succumbing to dust allergies. Tony squints at the header: _À rebours_.

But yeah, Tony’d had a point to jamming his finger into sharp objects. “Aside from the fact that you read French, I was going to ask you about Denmark.” Loki stiffens—and as he’s basically lying on top of Tony in their latest version of “PG-rated canoodling, just for you, Wonderbread”, that means his shoulder blades very thoroughly meet Tony’s chest. Painfully. “ _Ow_ , you bony fucker.”

This time the annoyance is clear in the way Loki shuts his book. Sitting up, he glares at Tony, ignoring the way his elbow is now digging into the very soft, vulnerable flesh of Tony’s abdomen. “What about Denmark.” It’s a clear threat to quit pursuing that particular line of questioning, if the rest of Tony’s soft parts want to emerge intact from this conversation. 

Tony considers whether his natural, healthy curiosity can in any way be classified as valour. Surely Loki won’t go for his balls? “I mean,” he hedges, while trying to subtly wriggle out of the reach of dangerous elbows, “what’s, uh, the weather like there?” 

It’s almost winter now; the trees outside are naked. Tony wishes Loki was naked. But yeah, that seems like a valid question—Upstate New York versus the wilds of Scandinavia. 

Loki narrows his eyes at him. Tony’s pretty sure he didn’t say that last bit aloud, but maybe Loki can read minds. That would explain a lot. 

“Not as cold as one might think,” he says eventually. He doesn’t seem inclined to elaborate further, and flops back down on Tony. _Ow ow OW_. He reopens his book, flips to his page, then adds, “And stop prying.”

His backbone is a long line of tension through his many sweaters, digging into Tony’s front. If Tony bent his head forward just a little, he’d smell Loki’s shampoo, the faint scent of vanilla. If he was so inclined, he could put his arms around Loki, hug a cranky wraith to himself, and said cranky wraith would let him. Maybe that’s as far as Loki will let him, and no further. 

“Okay,” he says. 

*

“Is there an ethical dilemma here,” he grumbles to Darcy later, “because seriously, boyfriends need to know these things, right?”

Darcy cackles. “ _Boyfriends_! Does Loki know you’ve labeled your relationship and—“she uses her fingers to make air-quotes “—made it _official_?”

Tony wonders why he brought this up with her. Maybe he really is insane; the first sign of a nervous breakdown not being his ill-advised bender but deliberately consulting Darcy Lewis on…intimate matters. He tells her as much, and receives another shriek of laughter in response. 

“Dude,” she gasps, wiping gingerly at the streaks of mascara now trailing down her face, “as much as I want to make fun of you, all I’ve got to say is what my Nana told me: “Curiosity killed the cat.” Also maybe castrated the cat first.”

Tony has a very strong recollection of _elbows_ , and rolls his eyes in agreement. “Yeah, point, Ratchet.”

Darcy cackles a little more. “I’ve got to tell Natasha.”

*

The _real_ ethical dilemma, Tony corrects himself now, isn’t posing questions to his stonewalling _boyfriend_ (yes, so maybe he’ll stick to referring to Loki as his boyfriend in his head, where no one can ridicule him except himself for being such a fucking _sap_ ), but going behind Loki’s back to ask Thor instead. Thor has been a veritable fountain of information when it comes to embarrassing childhood stories, after all. 

Thor promised to share a photo of prepubescent Loki with a scowl and a plaster cast; both of them had endured painful jabs to the gut and dire threats of evisceration, he’s pretty sure Thor’s man enough to answer some questions. 

“Can I have my one phone call of the day,” he says to Coulson, poking his head around the office door. Coulson’s office is as bland as the man himself. 

Coulson doesn’t look up from his paperwork, scribbles something and flips a page. “Not a prison, Mr Stark; you know you can have as many phone calls as you want as long as you let the orderlies know first.” 

“You keep saying that, but the eggs still look like mutant spawn,” Tony sulks, before wandering off to find Clint. 

*

“Why’re you asking _me_ ,” Clint says skeptically. “I don’t really deal with admin stuff, y’know.”

“Because Wonderbread’ll just look all sad and doubtful, _are you sure you want to do this, Tony_ , Natasha will laugh her head off at me before impaling me with her pen and telling Loki, and Darcy’s already made fun of me. _So_.” Tony has very good reasons and planning skills.

Clint huffs. “I can’t let you see patient records, obviously.” The “ _dumbass_ ” is unspoken but very clear. “I can pass you Thor’s phone number, though. Why didn’t you just ask him for it when he was here the day before?”

“I was getting Thor to teach me pickup lines in Danish, so I forgot,” Tony says defensively. 

*

Clint’s handwriting is shit.

“Your handwriting is _shit_ ,” he tells Clint. The scrap of paper he’s holding looks like a drunk kindergartner had a revelation and wrote it down in hieroglyphs while still convulsing.

“Fuck you,” Clint says cheerfully. 

Tony has a horrifying thought. “Do you write patient notes and prescriptions in this handwriting?”

*

So Tony’s hiding behind the counter in reception; the receptionist is giving him a dubious look, which is a step up from a _dirty_ look, so whatever. “ _Thor_ ,” he hisses into the phone, and suppresses the urge to twine the cord around his fingers like a teenage girl in the 80s.

“… _Hello_?” 

“It’s Tony,” Tony adds belatedly, at a more considerate volume. “I have some things I need to ask you.”

There’s a pause, and then Thor says, “ _I don’t think I can bail you out; Miss Potts was very clear on that_.”

Thor at least _sounds_ regretful, so Tony will let that slide. “Not a problem, buddy. Also not what I meant.” He hastily unwinds the telephone cord from his index finger when he catches the receptionist smirking. He’s a grown man in his forties, he can fucking have an awkward telephone conversation like one. “Uh, I wanted to ask about Loki’s—“

“ _IS HE ALL RIGHT_ ,” Thor suddenly shouts into the phone. Tony sighs.

“Dude, he’s fine. I just wanted to know about his birthday. Like, any Danish traditions or whatever that I should know about? And also, dude, _how old is he_ , because all these accusations of statutory rape isn’t good for my health.” 

“ _Oh_ ,” Thor says more calmly. “ _He’s twenty-seven next month. And he hates celebrating his birthday_.” There’s another thoughtful pause, then, “ _Mostly because he hates cake, I think_.”

Tony does a little fist-pump because _hah_ , not a cradle-robber. (He just needed to be sure.) “Good point about the cake; he’d probably make a mural out of it. But--” 

“ _To be honest, my friend, I haven’t celebrated Loki’s birthday with him in years_ ,” Thor interrupts mournfully over the phone. He sounds like he might be sniffling. “ _He was very earnest in cutting off contact when he moved to your country_.”

Oho. “Did uh, Loki ever say why?” 

There’s a very wary silence on the other end, like a shark’s sudden awareness of blood in the water. Or a bleeding golden retriever becoming aware of the shark in the paddle pool with it. Tony has awesome metaphor skills.

Finally: “ _That is not for me to say, Tony. Perhaps you should speak with Loki himself_.”

Tony gives up. “But the skinny bastard won’t even let me ask him anything,” he whines into the phone. The receptionist is giving him a judgmental look, whatever, he’s utilizing his powers of persuasion in all forms. 

“ _Then perhaps you should respect his wishes and let him tell you when he wants you to know_.” Thor sounds distinctly frosty now. “ _And if you ever call my brother such terrible names again, I will let you know my fist_.”

Tony hastily hangs up. Maybe he’ll have better luck picking the lock to the records room.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> To whoever is still reading this fic and waiting for updates: thank you for your patience.


End file.
